昨天知道一个让人震惊而且难过的事情. 一个我一直以来关注的blog的主人, 似乎已经不在人世了. 主人是国大的, 和我们学校的朋友组了个乐队,叫折腾. 是通过朋友的链接偶然看到这个blog的, 觉得写得比王朔还王朔. 写的特逗. 就老去看. 看着看着, 渐渐发现很久没更新了. 最后一篇entry是6月28日的. 昨天去一看, 还是那短短的一篇. 不经意发现回复居然已经71篇了. 很是叹服, 于是点开细细看了看. 越看越不对劲. 后来听朋友说此人已经车祸了.不知道是真是假. 怪不得前一段听说折腾乐队解散了, 当时以为大家谈不拢. 现在才知道为什么. 很难过, 虽然不认识, 而且听说此人是个无可救药的愤青. 可是毕竟这么年轻, 才23岁. 长得也仪表堂堂也挺有才. 就这么说没就没了. 看他最后一篇entry:

I knew it's gonna be bad. I just didn't expect it to be so bad.

 

I knew Michael is talkative, dominant and is gonna shoot at us. I just didn't know this person is at the same time so arrogant and vain.

 

Our brainchild of 30 hours plus of discussion, brainstorming, arguments and summarization, surveys, questionnaires, calculations and interviews, our innovative methodologies and unique solutions, our joy and sorrow, our expectations and trepidations, our confidence and motivation. everything is rejected in a disrepectal and humiliating manner by Michael Heng.

 

He seemed to me like a person who is willing to listen. I am right. He does listen. Just that he never, never agrees with what you say. and what i feel is that he is disagreeing just for the sake of disagreeing. That is, he is just habitually disagreeing without giving your reasoning a deeper think and trying to understand your point. And a lot of times, he will go ahead dominant the conversion on something that he doesn't really know anything about. Today in class he asked me where i was from. I told him I came from somewhere near Xi'An. He confidently declared to me that he knew Xi An. And then he proclaimed that Xi An is near Tibet....This afternoon during our group's discussion with him

he asked me what are the frontiers of nanotech now. Before I was able to finish my words, he took over and started talking about nanorobots, about their abilities to go in our brain and cure diseases as if he is the professor of nanotechnology. Nanorobots? what the hell do u think u r talkin abt? Sci-Fi in 2050? Do u have any idea that human being's current capabilities at nanotech is still at the basic fabrication level aimed at driving down the resolution as much as possible?

 

We discussed with him about our project for 1.5 hr this afternoon. What really impressed me is, although he talked 80% of the time and all what he said sounded so reasonable and provokes deeper thinkings, we all couldn't learn a thing from it. In other words, he is so good at talking crap that he can do it 24 hr non-stop and still look like he is imparting the truth.

 

what is most unfair is the partiality he shows for girls. Group 4 had similar flaws as we did and yet Michael was so kind to them and they passed comfortably. In the end, what we realize is, we are not really doing a Blue Ocean Strategy that works. We are just doing something that pleases him. Our proposed value innovation is perfectly blue ocean in nature. But what 's the piont of carrying on when someone judging what you do is a person who doesn't know what himself is talking about?

 

I guess the point of this course is to bring to students that  reality in life. that everything is not perfect. that things don't happen the way we want them to. that we should get out of this classroom environment and learn to deal with real life. But Michael might have forgotten that, in real life, people have priorities. Now my priority is to get a good degree instead of getting an A for his Human Resourcement Management. I dont go ahead and sunk all time into this project and screw up all my other core subjects.

 

I will still try my best at it, just with a different starting point in mind. Instead of really focusing on doing things well, I'm gonna focus on how to please Michael. Probably a bit ironic, but I guess this is also part of the facts about real life.

 

 

 

before i even realize,  i'm already in the final year of my university life. and i can feel things changing around me. people change too, including myself. i begin to notice things that i will never notice before, read emails that i used to delete without a glance. talk to people i don't know and i don't like. and the main topics among me and my friends now go: " what r u gonna do after u graduate?" "r u gonna get a phD?" " r u going to that recruitment talk?" blahblahblah...

 

all these changes come in such a sudden as if they r bluntly thrusted upon me. Before I know, I'm faced with a plethora of career path choices. I could do a phD at NTU or NUS, which right now seems to be the easiest and most feasible way out. However after my 22-week stint with IBN, i am basically disgusted by research: 1. it is dull and boring. 2. i don't see the point of doing what i do in IBN, which defuses my motivation and passion. 3. i don't really think I'm good at it. i'm too unmethodical and careless for systematical appraoch to problems. 4. after all these years cracking for exams. I want a break. I want to experience something new. I wanna know, besides being able to be a good student with satisfactory academic performance, what else can I do? 5. NTU, especially SCBE, has totally disillusioned me. and I don't think NUS will be significantly better. these reasons basically invalidate choice 1.

 

choice 2: i go for a phD program in the US. That's what I initially dreamt about and fought for, at least before I joined IBN. Just the thought of going to the US was such an excitement. Graduating with a top US university phD degree sounds so tempting and glorious. That's why I went ahead to take the GRE test, took all the pains to sit for it and finally passed it last month. However, as my understanding about research crystallizes, I had been becoming more and more convinced that scientific research is not my cup of tea. Besides, being a US phD doesn't seem to be that rewarding, at least materially. US is now facing a surfeit of biology phDs. The supply-demand mismatch is so realistic taht the traditional route of joining universities as faculty is no more viable, at least to most of the phD holders. While the very top people do get faculty positions, most of the average dogs end up being stuck in research labs as postdocs with lame pay and little prospect. I've seen people lamenting on bbs's that they are paid even less than the cleaners who clean their labs. In Singapore the situation is no better. My IA sup who has a phD in EEE from Cornell is earning only about 3-4K in IBN? How lame is that?! This is how Singapore aims to be a global hub for bioscience and technology? This is how they treat their talents? No wonder Singaporeans don't wanna do phDs. With my sup's years of experience and his intellectual competence, he could easily get more than that anywhere. Certainly he has bigger visions: setting up his own company with technologies he develops. However, as far as I know, I am not an entrepreneur either. (I hate myself for not being one.) Moreover, I am not confident enough to say that I am qualified for those top universities, even when my current profile might possibly get me into one of them if I applied. As my mentor commented when he heard that Zhiyong is going to MIT: " MIT is not for everyone." He also mentioned that 70% of phD's in Stanford don't get to graduate and get eliminated along the way when he heard that Jerome has taken up Stanford's offer instead of UWash's. From the people I know, doing a phD in the US is like hell. I ask myself thereafter: Why go compete with all these brilliant people on what you are not really good at? What are your chances of winning, or even surviving? Although I believe when I am forced to do something, I can do it well even if I don't really like it. Deep down in my heart I won't be happy. Since studying is no more what I want and a good result or a good university is no more something that I value that much, my desire of going to the US has also faded.

 

3. find a bioengineer job as an undergrad. problems with this choice are: 1. I am not sure whether I can find one. 2. even if i could, it is almost certain to be a lame-pay-low-position-no-prospect job that sucks away my passion and life. As people keep saying that to do well in this bioeng field, one must have at least a phD's degree. But even with a phD degree, I will still most probably be doing research. Now that I am stuck in a painful dilemma. Neither option leads to something i want and neither of them seems to offer a way out. what's more, I am fed up with bioengineering and seriously wanna do something else.

 

4. find another engineering job and start from scratch. I am still not sure about the feasibility of this option. But according to my observation of job recruitment talks notifications, having seen so many job offerings just precluded bioengineers as target audience, my expectations of steering this switch is minimal. As my undergrad course provided me little hardcore engineering foundation or specilization, with no core competencies, the prospect for a technical job is simply dismal.

 

hence I am now content with any kind of job as long as it offers growth and fun. Money is not something that I consider that much at this stage of my career. Banks seems to be a good option. But this piece of truth is so apparent and it might seemed too good that people swarm lecture theaters for major banks' recruitment talks. Tonight at Credit Suisse's recruitment talk at LT2A, I see tons of people, dressed up, confident, snappy, poised, eager,  energetic and aggressive. I feel like everyone I know went for the talk. After the talk, speakers and company representatives are instantly surrounded by well-prepared students who systematically and appropriately ask relevant questions. Seeing them smile, hearing them showcasing their various abilities and competencies, and occasionally cracking jokes, I can taste the pressure and competition in the air. I see similar sences at yesterday's ExxonMobil recruitment talk, and this afternoon's P&G's one. and I expect to see more of this to come as all the multinationals come one by one, deutsche bank, UBS, Citibank, JP Morgan Chase, HSBC, and all those companies that I'd break my neck to get in. The competition was so open, so real, so close and so relevant. I am now being harshly pushed ahead in a race.  I am torn in this torrent of thirst and eagerness, suffocated in this intense atmosphere of real life challenges, and exposed in this arena of bloodless fightings without a weapon to protect myself. I feel I am not ready.

 

 That's why this semester has been so much pressurizing then previous ones. Besides getting ready for exams, I must get ready for life. I might be good at the former, but for the latter, I am really not sure. My heart throbs so violently when I talk to strangers. I fumble for appropriate words and sentences in front of audience. I know little if any about resume writing, cover letter styles, interview tactics, and workplace etiquettes. For years I have been a student, naively absorbed in my books and notes, believing that a good academic result will automatically bring me to what I want and what I need. I have been wrong. Now faced with an empty resume, I feel so much regret and bitterness. If only i had done something that shows my leadership skills. If only my 2nd year results have been better. If only I have done more interns and part time jobs. After being a top student for so many years, I suddenly find that there's nothing left for me to be proud of. What I valued are valued no more. What I want is far away. O life! save me from these pain!

 

Luckily there is still some time. Hopefully enough for me to turn things around. No matter what these uncomfortable but realistic transitions in my life brings me, one thing is for sure: I will have to cope with it. And I will try my best,  to find out how.

 

 

我一直跟同居的帅哥们说中国人真幸福. 今天发生的事情再一次证实了我的论点.

 

依然范特西 今天就已经搞到整张专辑了. 所有的歌都全.

 

而官方的发行日是9月8日好像. 整整提前一周.

 

上次肖邦来得时候, 头一天晚上盗版就出来了. 现在盗版商又长足进步, 提前一周就交了作业. 周杰伦这次该哭了.

 

我在快乐的听. 快歌是一句都听不懂啊. 这孙子用的是中文吗?